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 enlarge | Author: Kitty Kelley
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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You Save: $7.98 (100%)
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Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 71937
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0553265156
Dewey Decimal Number: 784.500924
UPC: 978055326515
EAN: 9780553265156
ASIN: 0553265156
Publication Date: September 1, 1987
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| Customer Reviews:
 Do Not Read This Book May 30, 2006
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
This was evidently meant to be a commentary on the life and hates of Frank Sinatra. It was probably meant to be quite a character study - connect the dots between all the revolting facts coldly listed here and you find a revolting human being. If the dots don't quite come together, as they didn't for me, you find a rather different connotation. The solemn quote at the beginning delineates the difference between reputation and character. Ms.Kelley, being the all-knowing Author, gets right into her examination into Mr. Sinatra's character behind the reputation with a cold first chapter related in frankly impossible detail. From then on Sinatra is shown to be callous, pathetic, weak, vicious, brutal, abusive, crude, egomaniacal, vindictive, and quite possibly crazy in an overwhelming documentary that seems very fond of the two words "Sinatra screamed" and any reference to any weakness known to man that Sinatra allegedly possessed. In a cold, stark, very nearly cruel style interviews with disgruntled former employees, wives of friends, gangsters, yes-men, Hoboken tattle-tales, discarded girlfriends, two-bit comics, technicians, and the slimy Peter Lawford are all displayed in 633 pages of rot. The skeletal overview of Mr. Sinatra's life is almost frighteningly calculated - any unscrupulous writer can pick and choose to their heart's content while still remaining truthful, and Ms. Kelley could write a book about her inimitable art of relating only the least flattering information and blaming her digustingly biased view on outraged virtue.
Every character in this organized assasination, as a matter of fact, appears to be a good little human being, abused and cruelly rejected by Frank Sinatra, doing their sad duty to let the world know Sinatra done 'em wrong. Appears. Ms. Kelley apparentely agrees with them. Their sympathetically related tales are the backbone of the biography.
I have no idea how Kitty Kelley and several other Sinatra biographers are so blind that they have never been able to locate one positive Sinatra review in their life. In this book, if no bad review exists for a movie, record, concert, TV show, ect., it is either ignored or used to promote another example of bad behavior backstage. I know all the good reviews exist. I've read them, and it always surprised me because according to Kelley and other pick-and-choosers the perfomance was lousy. But this is not about a career, it's said; it's about a life. Then why mention any reviews at all?
If all the names mentioned in here actually said Sinatra was an awful person, I just might believe it. But they didn't. The uncomplimentary comments used are in any other source buried in an avalanche of rave reviews and praise. Ms.Kelley, of coure, the St. Bernard of literature, sniffed them out. Ava Gardner's autobiography paints a very different portrait of what she felt about Mr.Sinatra than the few harsh statements here. Lauren Bacall's "By Myself" is so often negatively interpreted it's ridiculous, and Ms. Kelley joins the long line of misinterpreters. Rare comments by Frank Sinatra Jr., Sammy Davis and others are gleefully repeated, despite the fact that their opinions about Mr.Sinatra are almost always positive to the extreme. No famous friends of his were interviewed, simply because people who genuinely loved him went as high as the summit of upper-class Hollywood, nobility, and the White House, and that was the type of thing Kelley wanted least. I read an interview in which Ms. Kelley supposedly said she didn't find Sinatra appealing because he had no sense of humor. Ha. There has never been anyone with as little humor about them as Ms.Kitty Kelley, executioner of reputation, fabricater of character. The sense of smug gloating, the nasty smirking of the authoress over Mr.Sinatra's discomfort at having so many people read this trash and BELIEVE it, is the only humor evident, and that makes me sick. Even if every statement were true, I'd still have a certain sympathy for Frank Sinatra, because, as it eventually becomes clear, you learn less than nothing about what Sinatra was really like, but you learn a great deal about the writer. The Sinatra story displayed is all probably untrue reputation, but Ms.Kelley's scheme for hurting him backfired - her character is evident. The preface says,''Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us." True.
On Sinatra: This Is Not The Book To Read April 12, 2006
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I read this bound piece of trash twenty years ago. I thought it was nothing but a steaming, stinking pile of lies and over-the-top exaggerations. Time has shown that the author, Kitty Kelley, is a hateful smear mistress lacking the least bit of integrity and decency.
All you will get from this book besides the outright lies are hearsay and rumors.
According to Kelley, Sinatra was nothing but a spoiled brat and bullying coward who relied on thugs to get what he wanted.
She tells us he brought home prostitutes and tried to force his first wife, Nancy, into threesomes with them. We read about a mafia hit on a smalltown sheriff whose wife was being screwed by Ol' Blue Eyes. Then there is the tale of a hot pot of fresh coffee which Sinatra launched at his longtime valet's face. Do you get the idea of what this book is all about?
HIS WAY is typical Kitty Kelley, epitomizing her level and ability as a writer and a human being.
Sinatra had many faults but they were vastly outnumbered by his virtues.
"The Next Time You Run Into Dorothy Kilgallen, Make Sure You're In Your Car." March 25, 2006
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Kitty Kelley is famous for her tell-all unauthorized biographies of celebrities. This is the one that put her on the map. The target of a "prior restraint" suit by Sinatra that tried to block its publication (fortunately for the First Amendment he failed), the resulting uproar made this book an instant best-seller.
Almost any reader will be titillated by the "Unauthorized" in the title, and HIS WAY does have some merit in the Guilty Pleasures department; but Kelley is so unrelentingly negative about Frank Sinatra that this two-and-a-half star effort becomes too easy to put down.
A reader coming here for a glimpse of Ol' Blue Eyes meets a skinny, histrionic bully who was fascinated by gangsters, lived by threats alone, was alternately the most generous and the most vituperative of men, and who never dropped his torch for Ava Gardner, for whom he had turned his life upside-down.
Kelley, however, chirps past most of his actual career in favor of juicy bedroom gossip, and never acknowledges that the twenty-five year old Sinatra was not the fifty year old Sinatra. Instead, The Chairman of The Board seems to have sprung fully grown and unflatteringly from Hoboken, New Jersey, much as Athena did from the head of Zeus.
Kelley moves from sordid story to sordid story with glee and with barely a breath, clearly not understanding (or wishing to understand) the inner motivations of her incredibly complex subject. HIS WAY is catty, enjoyable tabloid trash. But it's not "biography."
Sinatra had a lifelong feud with the Media (even though he lived and died in its eye). Kelley, a yellow journalist, clearly takes sides with her fellow journalists.
 Intriguing Biography April 13, 2005
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I agree that Kelley has emphasized the negative in Sinatra's life. But Sinatra had scared so many people away from telling the truth about him that this volume was much-needed addition to the Sinatra literature. Kelley does not completely neglect Sinatra's music, but precisely because he was already well known as a great singer, this book was a corrective to the longstanding hagiography surrounding him. "His Way" is the perfect title for the book. While Sinatra was a great singer, he was a rather selfish person. One minor note, which is not confined to this biography in particular: Whatever anyone can say about Illinois in the 1960 presidential election, it was not critical to Kennedy's election. Even without Illinois's electoral votes that year, Kennedy still would have been elected president. So to say that Sinatra somehow influenced the election is sheer nonsense, at least in regard to that state.
Gives a good different view October 12, 2004
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Kitty Kelley made headlines when she released her book on the life of Frank Sinatra. "His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra" created a controversy where Frank Sinatra fans were claiming the biography was one sided. Before Sinatra passed away, he went to court trying to prevent books such as this. He didn't want his many secrets of affairs, bar fights and mob ties to be public knowledge. Kelley did a great job of explaining these instances. But that is just what made this book just mediocre, and not great. She explained the many negative aspects of his life with great detail but left out all of the positive; his love for his family, influence on the music industry and most of all his great talent.
If you want to learn of the dark side of Frank Sinatra, this book is perfect. But, if you want to learn of his great musical impacts and his musical history, this book should be steered away from. When Kelley released it, controversy arose about the one-sidedness of the biography. I feel that even though I don't like Sinatra's dark side exploited, it is still a good book. Kelley includes great detail of his life and includes very interesting facts that were previously not known to the public.
When choosing a book to read about the life of Frank Sinatra, you must first decide what part of him you would like to read about. There are some well-rounded books out there outlining his life, both good and bad parts, but they do not go into as much depth of Kelley's. Over all this a well-written and interesting book that shows a side of Sinatra the public has heard about briefly but never knew the real stories behind the rumors.
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